The Price of Passing

Recently, a community college newspaper offered a fashion profile of several students. I was amazed and alarmed to learn that, if they were telling the truth, they were spending $200-plus on a pair of shoes and the same for a handbag. It’s true that the recent economic downturn has sent middle and upper middle class students to community college, especially this particular one, because of its reputation and transfer record, but I know for a fact that many, if not most students there can’t afford two-hundred-dollar shoes.

Grey-Poupon Syndrome?

But what do I mean by “afford”? Working class and poor people can sometimes binge financially just to have the feeling or image of wealth and comfort. I knew a woman who worked in a factory, not one of the old-time, high-paying ones, but a new, low-paying one, and drove a Mercedes. She didn’t own a house and she gave up a lot of things, but she loved the way people looked at her and the compliments she sometimes got at gas stations and elsewhere from other people, especially those who also drove Mercedes. Although I don’t have access to formal studies on this phenomenon, I have plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that minimum wage folks are giving up longterm financial progress for short-term psychological rewards. Let’s say a poor person has never travelled, and one reason is that she orders a four-dollar latté every day. If she put away eighty dollars a month, in a year she could go on a cruise, or live in a better apartment, or have a down payment for a car.

Recently the New Yorker profiled a young man who worked for a fashion magazine and had spent $20,000 on a man-purse. He acknowledged

that it might have been better to buy a car. He also said the shopping experience was not especially delightful. The customer service was ho-hum. However, it seems certain that the bag represented something for him. Certainly, he was the center of amazement and awe at work. People came by to view the bag. But could that possibly be enough?

In cases like these, the commodity’s use-value is almost nil compared to its symbolic value. Someone in the highest echelons has decreed this object to be of worth; indeed, its price alone makes it gawkworthy. Is this like the mania gamblers sometimes experience, the rush of throwing money around with extreme recklessness? How tragic that a “big” life experience for some should be spending far too much on a consumer item. I know this sounds harsh but how empty can life get? Do we live inside a commercial?

I’ll Show You! (How You Can Take Advantage of Me)

In college, my old winter coat had gotten so old that no matter how often I mended the lining, it was done for. My parents sent me seventy-five dollars to buy a new one. I didn’t have a car, I was terrified of thrift stores (and possible exposure that could result from shopping there–see a previous post) so I went to the one department store within walking distance, a JC Penneys. To me, this was a fairly upscale store. As I walked around the carrel of coats wearing my frayed jeans and old shoes, the salesgirl eyed me with suspicion. I knew she thought I was there to shoplift.

I tried on several coats. There wasn’t a great selection, but something in me burned to show her that in fact, I did have the money to shop there. It felt good, for a moment, to bring out my cash and say, “I’ll take this one.” Later, I overheard someone in my co-op say, “I know I haven’t touched bottom as long as I’m not shopping at Sears and Penneys.” She might have been a nice person in many ways and I’m sure she was completely unaware of my purchase, but I could never forgive her.

Years later, I worked at a nonprofit in a quasi-professional job, making about $25,000 a year, and my bus home took me through a luxurious shopping district. I saw a beautiful dress in a window; day after day, I saw it and coveted it. I knew it would look great on me and I felt I should have it, now while I was young, not decades later when I would have the money but not the looks. I also knew this was not a shop within my budget. One day, feeling defeated and stressed, I walked in. The dress was eye-poppingly expensive, and the salesperson, a beautiful fashionable young woman, said nothing to me. Once again, the urge arose in me to show her, but this time, I had more wisdom. I knew there wasn’t three hundred or four hundred dollars’ worth of happiness in wearing that dress. Not compared to other things I could have.

Predatory Salesmanship

When people have a hunger for public approval or even just to fit in, when they have a hole in them that stems from being at the bottom, on the outside, they are easy prey to consumer fairy tales. That’s why sometimes we see people on welfare with purebred dogs. It doesn’t mean they are getting such huge government payments that they can afford a purebred dog. It just means they are going without boots or a bike or a dentist.

Why We Need Working Class Values and Culture

The larger consumer culture does not serve poor people well. One could even say poor people are the victims of it. Some dedicated poor people are able to filter out the siren call of excess spending, to save and move forward, to maximize what they have and honor who they are. I’ve met working class people proud to be working class and proud of their culture—the pickles and apple butter they make, the sauerkraut or salsa they eat, their gardens of peppers or potatoes, their ability to repair their own cars and replace their own windows— but I wonder if TV culture, two parents working, and schools that have cut out practical training, have dealt a death-blow to this kind of pride. I hope not.

We live within a larger culture that despises fast-food work and ridicules those who do it (How many comedies illustrate failure with a fast-food hat?) yet Burger King and McDonald’s are the tenth and eleventh largest employers in the U.S. last time I checked. Even there, little pockets of pride exist despite the larger culture’s campaign of shame. I remember a young woman from a ghetto area whom I met at college writing center, and she spoke without irony about the responsibility and value she’d gotten from her fast-food job, how she was proud to be entrusted with money, with the keys to open and close the building. She had learned how to do things, and she was calmly planted in her self-esteem. It would be good to see more of that.

About Post Author

Lita Kurth grew up in rural poverty in Northern Wisconsin, but excellent public schools, low tuition, and a modicum of financial aid allowed her to attend college (University of Wisconsin). Starting out as an historian at UC Berkeley, she switched gears, working as a fund raising researcher and grant proposal writer until returning to get a degree in English Composition (San Francisco State) followed by an MFA in creative writing (Pacific Lutheran Rainier Writers Workshop). She has taught at numerous colleges and universities and currently teaches part-time at De Anza College, retaining a passionate interest in the suffering and injustice that still exists in the lives of poor and working class people, as well as other justice issues. She has published essays, reviews, stories, and poems, and is at work on a novel, The Rosa Luxemburg Exotic Dance Collective.

9 Responses

A very insightful and moving post. I see the same behavior among teens, many of whom don’t have the allowances or money-planning skills to deal wisely with the “sales” and “offers” they see every day. They fall for these objects they feel will make them cool somehow.

I really appreciate the bit about the life skills learned at McDonald’s, too. So easy to overlook and ridicule those jobs. Insightful as always, Lita. Thank you for this.

Romanticizing poverty and poor people sticks in my craw. I think it’s a privileged perspective to assume that poor people don’t make thoughtful, personal choices in the purchases they make–whether we approve of their purchases or not. Or that “dedicated poor people” must live without things they want in order to get ahead.

I was part of a circle dialogue once where folks talked about the meaning in what we buy, how we spend our money, and such. One person wanted to know why immigrants had to buy shiny trucks and put themselves into debt before anything else. Another person asked why Native Americans now charged so much for their pottery when at one time you could buy their crafts for a quarter or a dime by the side of the road. I asked why did White people think they could tell me how to spend my money after I worked so very hard for it. After all, I have the right to be just as stupid with my money as the next person.

When I’m smart with my money now, it’s not because I remember those wonderful days around the campfire as my family scraped by on tv dinners and second hand clothes. It’s not because the dominant community tells me now that once you climb that social mobility ladder the view from up there wasn’t quite worth it, so don’t bother trying.

I whole heartedly agree with you. I personally found Lita’s post offensive. Americans in general succumb to the pressures and allure of our consumer-driven society. The example of putting away $80 a month, is evidence of Lita’s lack of knowledge concerning poor and working class people, many of them don’t have an extra $80 to put away to begin with, if they do that money is going towards bills and food.

It is part of being human to irrationally want something to show off, from early man wearing feathers and shells to modern day “bling”. (Do people still use that term?) In many, perhaps most, cases, people can resist this primal urge and make a reasoned, rational choice. Still, who among us has not made a totally irrational, embarrassing, and possibly reckless purchase?

I hope no one got the impression that I was talking about all poor people; I’ve spent a lot of my life pondering choices, wondering how much agency I had. Poor people have less and less these days. Maybe splurging on something you really want right now is a rational response to the futility of saving. I just hate to think so.

I think that we already have blue collar culture and values, but they are not uniform. For example have the working class Irish and Italian cltures in the northeast, and the more rural blue collar culture of the south and midwest. I don’t really think we need to glorify it though, a lot of those values, and parts of those cultures clash with the reality of today’s world. I don’t think what people see on television has had as much of an effect on blue collar people as what has happened economically in the last decade.

Let’s face it, opportunity for blue collar and working class people has declined significantly. The days of plentiful jobs that paid a liveable wage are over, in a lot of places the best a working class kid can hope for is a minimum wage job bagging groceries, stocking shelves, or deep frying chicken parts. Why would someone have pride in a background and a culture where you have a better chance of being in poverty, or having a relatively lower quality of life, then of having anything semblance of the lifestyle of the previous generation? If you want people to take pride in their culture and their background, give them something to be proud of.

Another point here. As a straddler I do have some things from my working class background that I take pride in, but there is a lot to be desired. Make no doubts about it, a solid part of this culture is hostile to the idea of rising above it. As someone that experienced it firsthand, if you pull yourself up, you may very well no longer find yourself welcome.

And just to comment on the posting about fast food jobs. These are generally despised, because let’s face it, these jobs suck. They really suck. And most people know this because practically everyone has either worked in fast food, retail, or other low end service jobs at some point in their lives. They pay is abyssmal, people treat you like garbage, and by and large they don’t really attract the most talented, skilled, or enthusiastic work force. I think people tend to hate these jobs more because of their accumulated negative experiences with these positions. (The low pay and poor treatment by co-workers and supervisors recieved at these jobs, the poor service they recieve at these places from unmotivated/apathetic/incompetent/indifferent service workers. Some people may take pride in having learned from these jobs, but for a lot of us, they are generally negative experiences that encouraged us not to screw up our lives.